She closed the door to her and Martin’s room and sat on the bed. A golden light came through the windows, its undertone slightly blued. The chill and cold would soon settle in. Most of the trees on their property had already shed their leaves, just a faint red haze still remained on the maples.
She, who’d last cried at the age of seven, who did not cry the day she realized she would have to have a baby, nearly cried. Daniel once cared about how commas, and colons, and semicolons affected the meaning of a sentence, linguistic tools now reduced to separators of information on applications, in essays in which he articulated his dreams, the adventures he said he wanted to experience in his own life, so distinct from what he used to have Henry experience, undertake. Daniel’s were so safe.
She wasn’t aware her hand was pressed against her throat until she saw herself in the large bathroom mirror. She and Martin had recently been to a party where a palm reader in a turban had read the palms of all the partygoers sloshed on margaritas. The woman, Madame Something-or-Other, had read Joan’s, identifying the health line (very good and not crossing the life line, so she should not expect ill health, inherited illnesses, digestive problems, or a lack of stamina, good information to have); the sun line (long and vertical, denoting many blessings); the hard worker’s line (curving toward Joan’s thumb, a truth she already knew about herself); the heart line (a curved line some distance from her fingers that revealed her generous, sensual, and loving nature, not true as a young writer, now mostly true as a wife and mother); the head line (touching both sides of her palm, indicating a focused individual, although Madame said it also suggested someone self-centered, which Joan took to mean her work on Words); the life line (mostly long, but there were two breaks, suggesting more than one change of direction in life, easy enough to interpret); and the fate line (a double line foretelling two careers, again easy enough to interpret).
But now that palm, with all of its positive affirmations, was clutched around her own neck. It seemed improbable that one could strangle themselves in this way, the autonomic nervous system would kick in, the implement meant to bring death would fall away, the lungs pulling in air, but there was a residual red hand print against her throat, any harder and she might have been able to see all of those lines in a map across that fragile skin.
She leaned in close and appraised herself. Forty-two now, in that vast middle section of life, past the chronological bloom of youth. In terms of her writing, it didn’t much matter, the nature of her stories had saved her from being viewed as an ingénue. But she was vain enough that looking a full decade younger than she was, satisfied, even delighted. Her hair remained black and lustrous, loose curls still poured down her back, trimmed since she was pregnant with Daniel, of course, but she had never hacked it off, as the Pregnant Six had, going shorter and shorter each year, until their butterscotch bobs had lightened into short bright blond hair tight against the shapes of their heads. Joan’s haircutter knew not to take more than an inch at each four-month visit. The eyes Daniel inherited from her were as blue as ever, the finest fan of crows’ feet at the corners, one light line running across her forehead when she was stressed. Her body slender as it had been at twenty-five, lithe and toned from her ritualized two days of yoga every week, though no longer on the weekdays—devoted as religiously as possible to the novel—but a sacred hour each Saturday and Sunday. Those weekend mornings, over in Starborough, she was a purely physical being, torqueing and twisting herself in and out of the poses she had come to know so well, while the Manning men bonded at the Rhome Diner over pancakes and waffles and bacon, talking men-talk, whatever that might be, when one was twelve, the other sixteen, the father forty-nine.
She was seven years and eight hundred pages into the third draft of the novel, but was not yet at the finish line. Some writers knew where they were going from the start, tacked up graphs and flow charts, plot points on notecards, but Joan had never written that way, could not write like that, her characters needed room to breathe, to find their own ways, as she did. She wasn’t sure if she had a hundred pages to go or more. She kept herself from thinking about the book’s future, about her future when she completed it, she was still at the stage where the only thing that mattered were the words on the page.
Perhaps she was projecting, perhaps the loss she felt for Daniel was misplaced, that the loss she was mourning was her own, that she was this age and still had not completed Words of New Beginnings, still had not published that first novel now no longer eagerly expected. She hadn’t heard from Volkmann in years, other than a card at the holidays, a dashed note along with the statements identifying the number of copies of her collections sold that year, the Storr & Storr checks written out to Joan Ashby tucked inside. She knew very well that the book represented her own new beginning, whenever that day might finally arrive. That was her focus; she could not worry about Daniel. He was old enough to know his own mind. If he had decided he was not a writer, then he wasn’t, and she would have to respect that.
CREATED BY THE GODS
Dēvatā‘ōṁ kē dvārā nirmit
18
If it was true that infants were born with all knowledge and talent, it seemed to Joan there were three potential roads thereafter: the knowledge solidified, intensified, the budding talents flourished, turned tenacious and lasting, as her own had; or all that knowledge, all that childhood talent lacked the tenacity to remain everlasting, like with Daniel, at least with the writing—what he might do in the future was a complete unknown—or the knowledge and talent was hidden by obstreperousness and emerged later to stunning effect, like what happened with Eric.
* * *
At the start of the new year, the small Manning house began filling up with strange boys who played no games, no pranks, and told no jokes, but the snacks and cold drinks Joan set out in the kitchen for them vanished without a trace, without her ever seeing them come and go, and they left behind no crumbs, no used napkins, no empty cans. Eric never cared much about having friends, but now he was somehow the leader of these boys, ghostly boys who were pale-faced and jean-clad, but did not look scary or rabid, did not wear solid black or trench coats, did not listen to heavy metal or any music at all, but along with Eric, they spent evenings after school and every weekend at the Mannings’, searching for some Holy Grail, following a mosaic trail only they could see. She thought they were older by more than the year that separated Eric from his eighth-grade classmates, and she was right, his troop of quiet and intense and intensely quiet followers were all juniors at Rhome High.
“Computers, Mom,” Eric said. “We’re teaching ourselves to code. Well, really, I’m teaching them because I’ve been teaching myself.”
His having friends was a change, good or bad Joan wasn’t sure, but he was becoming social in a way he had not been before, even if he lacked the easy charm Daniel inherited from Martin, their shared ability to make friends quickly, adored equally by old women and children. Joan took to throwing open the front door when she saw the ghostly boys coming up the snowy path, welcoming them in dulcet, happy tones. Even then, they merely nodded, avoiding her eyes, shy maybe, but several bent at the waist, a half-bow in her honor, as if they were at a cotillion. She laughed when she told Martin about it later.
In February, Eric began campaigning to attend, for ten weeks, a summer computer camp for advanced children that specialized in coding and programming and development, held at a college a hundred miles away.
“Well, he’s advanced,” Martin said to Joan. “Or at least that IQ test said he was, though his grades don’t really reflect he has any smarts at all.” And Joan said, “He’s never once wanted to go to camp. What if we send him and he calls crying the first day, the second, after the first week?”
They took their concerns to Eric, who said, “I will never call and beg to come home. This camp is different than those places you wanted to send me. I won’t have to do things I don’t want to do, like swim races in a lake, or ride horses, or make lanyards, or
sing songs around some stupid campfire. This camp is critical for me. For my personal growth. There’s no computer science teacher at school and I’ve learned everything I can learn on my own, and the camp has all these PhDs as counselors. If you let me go, I promise I’ll work harder and get better grades next year.”
When did he learn the term PhD, Joan and Martin wondered, and when Joan said, “Eric, it’s only February, you can start working hard at your schoolwork now, get good grades this year,” Eric said, “Sure, sure. That’s what I meant.”
Joan and Martin traded looks, and Eric saw the looks that they traded, and he said, “Just wait, I’ll show you,” and he loped out of the living room, down the hall to his bedroom, and then loped back, never much of an athlete, handing the camp’s brochures to his parents.
“I wrote away for this stuff before Christmas,” he said proudly, head held high. He certainly knew how to take care of those things that mattered to him.
The camp was incredibly expensive, the cost greater than a semester’s tuition at the undergraduate Wharton program Daniel was hoping to be accepted into. But Joan didn’t care. A dozen PhDs were indeed listed as counselors in the brochures, their full bios and CVs, the schools they had attended, the breakthroughs they had made in their fields, the professorships they held at major universities—MIT, Harvard, Yale, Princeton—during the school year. In capitalized and bold letters, the brochure stated ONLY THIRTY STUDENTS WILL BE ACCEPTED. An application was required, including an essay written by the aspiring computer whiz. And that’s what the application said: An essay of no less than 1,000 words written by the computer whiz.
Joan read through the brochure, as Martin was doing, and all she could think about was that this child of theirs who now, more than ever, required a keen, watchful eye, who still had the tendency to put foreign objects into his mouth, to suck on a nickel when he was at his computer, who said, “The nickel keeps my attention from wandering,” whose attention never did seem to wander as long as he was engaged in what he loved, regardless of the nickel, whose clothes were often grimy, reused for days after his quick five-minute morning shower until Joan said, “No more. New rule. Fresh underwear, fresh jeans, fresh shirt every single day,” and Eric humphed and said, “Mom, I always put on fresh underpants,” though it was clear he didn’t care much if he was perceived as a slob, this son who had made friends with a number of equally odd boys, this son would be those PhDs’ responsibility for ten glorious weeks.
“Absolutely, you’ll go, if you’re accepted,” Joan said a few days later, not having meant to say absolutely, wanting Eric to understand life did not always come through as one might expect. But she didn’t backtrack, after all she and Martin were agreed, and she was elated.
“I’ll be reading your essay, so make sure you do a really great job on it. And don’t—Eric, are you listening? Don’t wait until the last minute to write it. I want to see a draft in two weeks.” She wanted him to be admitted, to go there, to be gone for all of the summer.
Whoops and catcalls, then promises of how good he would be, the studying he would do. “I’ll go and write the essay right this minute, right now, see I’m going, I’m going, I’m gone,” and his door banged shut. Joan crossed her fingers for luck and believed only some of it. He would, however, begin writing that essay at once.
Two days later, Eric handed Joan a thousand convoluted words about how computing and coding did not level the playing field, but instead lifted everyone up. She read the essay through, and then read it again, not completely understanding her son’s thesis, wishing he had inherited an iota of her literary talent. But he lacked her fluidity with words, the fluidity she had passed down, in large measure, to Daniel. Eric’s essay had no chance of opening the vaunted doors to the camp. She debated for a minute, then sat down at the kitchen table and rewrote it until it made sense and read well enough to warrant his admission to the camp, but not so well that it would raise suspicion.
When the acceptance arrived, she wasn’t sure who felt the greater thrill.
* * *
In March, Martin was away all of the month. Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, across the Baltic Sea to Denmark, across the North Sea to the United Kingdom, then home. Daniel kept track of his father’s travels, stuck tacks into the map of Europe he hung on a bedroom wall for his AP European history class.
Martin called home at the beginning of his stay in each country and said to the boys:
“Din far her å si jeg elsker deg,” in Norwegian;
“Du är både utestående pojkar oavsett, vad din mamma säger,” in Swedish;
“Et tiedä kylmä ennen kuin olet, missä minä olen,” in Finnish;
“Julge olla, olla õnnelik, ei lase elu jama sa up,” in Estonian;
“Jūs, iespējams, nav pietiekami daudz jēgas, lai saprastu, cik laimīgs jūs dzīvot, kur mēs,” in Latvian;
“En fiasko, men alle de andre har været mirakler for videnskab,” in Danish;
“Hello, mates,” when he landed in the UK.
Daniel kept a log of Martin’s greetings:
Norwegian: Your father here saying I love you.
Swedish: You are both outstanding boys, regardless of what your mother says.
Finnish: You do not know cold until you are where I am.
General: Tell your mother that I’m just leaving the three countries where all those mysteries I’ve been reading are set. No wonder the detectives are so morose, having to search for the killers in all of this snow.
Estonian: Be brave, be happy, don’t let life mess you up.
Latvian: You probably do not have enough sense to understand how lucky you are to live where we do.
Danish: One failure, but all the others have been miracles of science.
Successful surgeries in all of those places, except Latvia. In Riga, Martin had not been able to save a young mother’s sight. “Advanced diabetic retinopathy. Abnormal new blood vessels growing right in the center of Valija’s eyes. I tried laser photocoagulation to control the leakage, and a vitrectomy to remove blood from the vitreous fluid of the eye, but sometimes there is no magic to be made. Such a shame, her little girl will have to learn to do for her mother.” Daniel had no interest in medicine as a potential profession, but he liked hearing the procedural steps, the gory details.
* * *
In April, Daniel opened the envelope from the Wharton program at UPenn, and he ran to Joan, hugged her hard, said, “Best day ever of my life,” and though she was excited for him because he wanted this, it was, she knew, the wrong place for him, a whole curriculum for which he was not suited. He did not have that hardened glossy shellac, that abundance of blustering ego the big financial suits wore like armor. He was still her sweet, sensitive boy, meant for a life of words, big problems solved by fiction. The books he had read as a child, was still reading, were largely responsible for the young man he was becoming. Despite the swim team, where he was now on varsity, a top swimmer in the state; despite the dates he had taken Tammy on, the girl he first met in seventh grade, the owner, still, of hamsters; despite the AP classes he had taken and was taking; despite how hard he worked to polish off each semester with a report card of solid A’s; despite how much he had studied for the standardized tests and scored well, that was the truth of him: a boy with big dreams who had to work hard to see them realized.
When she tried to imagine Daniel in a suit with a serious tie, lace-up shoes on his feet, sitting around a large lacquered conference-room table, debating the terms of some corporate deal in financial-speak, she could see nothing at all, not even the room.
Martin did not share her concerns; he was delighted the books Daniel read in such quantity had not made him a dreamer, that Daniel had serious aspirations for his future that involved the making of serious money, facing people head-on across that conference-room table, rather than staring down into their eyes as Martin did, until he gave them back their sight and they all walked out the door, rarely returning to show Martin w
hat they had done with the gift he had given them.
Joan had not known Martin felt this way, and before she could say, “Wait, slow down, when did you stop loving the work you do?” Martin said, “Our son aspires to be a great white shark,” and Joan thought there was no great white shark hidden beneath Daniel’s thin skin. If anything, he might be a dwarf lanternshark, a little-known species of dogfish shark that measured, at most, 8.3 inches long, the shark Daniel once had the squirrel wrestle, Henry thinking the whole time how big and brave he was, how steadfast and true, taking down the impossible, when his nemesis had been less than the length of a school ruler. Daniel was five feet ten inches now, and still growing, and he read the business section of the New York Times every day, a subscription of his own that he asked for as one of his seventeenth-birthday presents. The paper had long been delivered to Joan and Martin, but only from Friday through Sunday.
“I need to know what’s going on in the business world every single day,” he had said. Once, he had cared about what would happen to Countess Ellen Olenska in Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence.
* * *
On the last day of April, the wind blowing since Fool’s Day—keeping away the bees and the wasps, tossing around the hummingbirds, ripping the pear tree buds from the branches before they could flower, until the greening grass looked ice-dusted—finally ceased. The kitchen windows were open, a slight perfume from the flowers unfurling their colors. All the Mannings were around the kitchen table eating dinner, an occurrence that was happening less and less often.
“So what do you want for your big birthday, Dad?” Daniel asked.
Martin’s birthday, his fiftieth, was not until the end of June, but Daniel was the son who planned ahead, who stored up thoughtful gifts to bestow upon his family members. Eric rarely remembered to write out even a homemade card.
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby Page 18
